


i listened to the deep brag of my heart (i am, i am, i am)

by jamesstruttingpotter



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy-centric, F/M, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy’s heard Clarke’s scream more times than he’d like, so he knows his imagination is more than capable of supplying the sound. </p>
<p>Still, as he looks out toward the trees she disappeared into, her voice echoes like a gunshot in his ears.</p>
<p>(Post season 2. He learns to muffle the demons that haunt him, even the ones that take an achingly familiar shape.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i listened to the deep brag of my heart (i am, i am, i am)

Bellamy wakes up gasping, shirt sticking to his sweat-slicked back, jagged edges of a familiar voice cutting into his eardrums. Darkness immediately surges against his eyes, thick and choking; he kicks off his blanket and stumbles out of his tent, blinking wildly against piercing white starlight. 

_Dreams_ , he tells himself firmly.  _Only dreams._

He’s been having a lot more of those than he’d like lately.

Sharp autumn air jabs at his lungs when he gulps down mouthfuls of it. It tastes like rust, which smells like blood, which gushes over his hands again like it had just a few seconds ago, Atom’s dying face a gasping, white blur, Murphy’s a writhing, sick animal. Mount Weather, gorging itself on festering, blistered mounds of flesh, licking up skin and meat from his own fingertips as he clutches the cold metal of the feeding lever.

He balls up his fists, puts them in his pockets.

Bellamy’s heard Clarke’s scream more times than he’d like, so he knows his imagination is more than capable of supplying the pitch, the exact tonal representation of her anguish. 

Still, as he looks out toward the trees she disappeared into, her voice echoes like a gunshot in his ears.

* * *

Octavia is the first to lead the charge for a separate delinquents camp. Others quickly rally to her cause, recognizing that the Council’s rules, old decrees that breathed in space but should have choked on Earth, are quickly starting to chafe. 

The ensuing arguments between the adults and teenagers drops a long-forgotten weight on his shoulders. He used to be responsible for these people, it tells him, and he remembers with sudden fierceness. These people used to be his people, the people he infiltrated a mountain for, the people he fought and killed and almost died for, a hundred times over. 

He remembers the thick metal collar around his neck, his terrified faith in the survival of their people, and lobbies for another meeting with Chancellor Griffin. He remembers the slow sludge of draining arteries, his desperate will to get to their people before they, too, felt the wet, sucking hunger of empty tubes -  _I bear it so they don’t have to_ , whispers the dark - and spends a sleepless night planning counterarguments to Councilman Kane’s speech.

“Look,” he finally yells during the fourth assembly-turned-raucous-debate, silencing the crowd of delinquents and adults alike. “We no longer recognize Council authority. So you can kill us, as per your legal system, wasting the time and lives you spent rescuing us from Mount Weather, and pissing off a bunch of parents. Or you can let us go in peace.”

The cheering after the Council gives their blessing three days later largely comprises of praise for Bellamy. “Glad to have you around, Chief,” Harper jokes. 

Later, in bed, he clenches his eyes closed and thinks of a space pod radio, of slick black metal whipping out of his palm and into a fast flowing stream.  _I did it so the adults wouldn’t come down here_ , he’d told everyone, and those still loyal to him had believed it. Those against him recognized the act as a selfish one. Months later, the adults are down here anyway, and no one is against him anymore.

(He has murdered whole classrooms of kids, watched a whole dining hall asphyxiate at his hand; he is not strong enough to accept a life of comfort after that, of sitting back and letting the Council make the hard decisions while he’s fed and clothed and cared for. Guilt is driving him out of Camp Jaha, and he is selfish enough to mask his sins as virtues, his cowardice as leadership.)

He watches the stars until they scream out of existence.

* * *

Jasper doesn’t meet his gaze when they pass in the middle of their newly-erected camp.

This, too, feels like penance.

* * *

“So I’m thinking about leading a five-person expedition south and I want your opinion on how to go about it,” Monty says, unfurling a crude map on the table between them. Bellamy stares down at it, tries to make sense of the winding paths and vast blank spaces. “It’s mostly to look for a spot with better resources than we have now, since we’re, you know, pretty far from fresh water. I just want to know how long we can be gone and how far we should go.”

“Uh…” Bellamy grasps at his fleeing thoughts, tries to force them into some semblance of order. “Why are you going south?”

“Following the big river. Hopefully we can find smaller freshwater tributaries. And Lincoln says there’s still game down there, game we’re used to hunting.” 

Monty pauses, clearly waiting for Bellamy to give him crisp instructions on what to do. Bellamy tries to think about planning, about provisions and weapons and logistics, but all he can think is that there are only thirty four of them remaining, that five people is a pretty big percentage of their population, how food is running short and how it’s getting colder and how the remaining twenty nine teenagers left behind at camp would look at him if he were the one to authorize a scouting expedition that killed five of their number - 

“Bellamy? Do you have any plans for how long we should - “

“I don’t know!” he snaps, and he feels more than sees Monty go still. A hot rush of shame immediately prickles against his spine and he looks up to face the other boy, shoulders dropping. 

“I’m - I’m sorry,” he says, voice low.

Monty assesses him quietly. “Are you doing okay?” he asks, and Bellamy fights down the automatic knot of defensiveness in his throat. 

“I just… don’t know what to do,” he finally says after a moment of silence.

Monty waits, patient. 

Bellamy pinches the bridge of his nose, shakes off the doubt that rests like a crown on his head. “Alright. Take five people, like you planned. Take enough food for a week’s expedition. Stay close, just in case; head down the mountain we’re on, since we don’t want to be this high during the winter. Stay by the coastline, I think - uh, I think coasts are warmer in the winter…” 

“Yeah, and cooler in the summer,” Monty supplies, nodding, and Bellamy feels a slow trickle of relief. 

“Right. Ask Lincoln to draw you a better map of the rivers by the coast, and  _please_  ask him to outline other Grounder tribes’ territories.”

Monty nods briskly and makes as if to leave the tent, but pauses before opening the flap. “Are you going to be okay?”

Bellamy breathes in through his nose, forcing his lungs to expand and his head to clear. “Yeah. Uh, assemble your crew and get back to me, alright? Let’s take this slow.”

“Got it.” The nylon rustles as Monty pushes back outside. Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, pulls the map closer to him, and examines it more closely.

* * *

Life rushes forward. They relocate to their new campsite and settle in before winter descends. Raven creates a new walkie-talkie system that deserves at least half the credit for their relatively large food supply. Miller whips their volunteer guard corps into shape. Octavia sets up a medical tent, complete with Lincoln’s herbs and expertise.

Everything is both familiar and completely strange. People are happy, for the most part, which is a blessing that Bellamy hadn’t dared to hope for. There are, of course, minor disputes that have always and will always arise when a group of teenagers are thrown together and trying to survive, and he finds himself playing peacemaker more often than not. The role is bizarre after months of being on war footing; even more surreal is that his word is taken as the final one.

Clarke’s scream reverberates off the stars on nights after difficult days, the days when Trina nearly kills herself trying to lay out Raven’s new animal trap design, when Mel gets into an argument with Monroe that somehow ends with Sterling’s death getting tossed around like a live grenade, when Jasper finally breaks down and rages at him for an hour, the entire camp deathly silent as he bellows, and Bellamy sits and listens, blood like ash in his mouth as he remembers the quick fingers that had cut him down from where he hung and the girl who had owned them.

Mostly, though, exhaustion pulls him into its undertow and he lets it, staggering to an empty sleep every night after hours of working on their defensive wall, checking in on medical, organizing hunting expeditions, building new huts. The ground is his bed until everyone else gets makeshift mattresses, and he’s started to find frost winding through his hair when he wakes, the cool grey of early morning swathing him in chills and grim determination.

* * *

Their first snowfall causes near-hysteria in camp. 

“Jesus fuck, that’s  _cold_ ,” Raven hisses, tugging her hand away from the ground.

“It’s  _snow_ , of course it’s cold,” Octavia says, grinning. She twirls amidst the white. Bellamy can’t find it in him to tell her to pull on a jacket.

Harper is sticking her tongue out experimentally. Miller is grumbling and pulling on his beanie. A bunch of younger kids are running around, shrieking as mud and half-melted snowballs fly through the air, laughing unabashedly as flakes catch in their clothes, their hair, their lashes. Weightlessness floats up from Bellamy’s chest as he watches them.

“Oh  _shit_ ,” yelps Monty, right before he lands on his ass. There’s a suspended beat of surprise, broken by a bark of laughter from a surprised-looking Jasper. Everyone else, Monty included, joins in, and Miller heaves him up by the elbows. 

“Watch out for the ice patches,” Bellamy calls out, and his face feels sore, cracked open.

“Oh, Bell,” Octavia says, voice quieter than he’s heard in a while. Her fingers brush his cheek, cold and gentle. “You’re smiling.”

He closes his eyes. He thinks of wild blonde hair and a firm blue gaze. Then he looks down at his sister, looks past her to his people. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read; please let me know what you thought!


End file.
